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Artist putting quirky Carlisle in the picture

A sketch a day is helping one former Carlisle woman spread her love of the city.

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Rosie Cunningham, 27, is a freelance illustrator and almost two years ago she came up with the idea of drawing a different illustration every day.

“I found that even though I’m an illustrator, I wasn’t necessarily drawing every day,” she said. “I was invoicing or book-keeping or other tasks, and so I decided I would do a new sketch every week day, Monday to Friday.”

Each series of sketches follows a theme, and in January Rosie decided to share some of the magic of her home city of Carlisle.

She said: “I lived in Carlisle until I left to go to uni at 18 – my mum and sister still live in the city centre.

“I’d already done something on Glasgow, and I decided it was time to do something about the other city that I love.”

Rosie already knew of some facts – having created a little book of information for a friend about five years ago – but decided to research each of them.

“I mainly used the internet,” she continued, “but I made sure a fact was cited in several different places, because I don’t want to offend people with some spurious information.

“I’ve since had people telling me other facts, and I’ve been researching those.”

However, for Rosie the best part of the project is the response from the public, with strangers contacting her to add their own anecdotes and stories to the illustrations.

Each sketch takes one to two hours, including research, creating a pencil sketch, inking it in and then colouring it electronically. Rosie initially planned only to carry on until the end of the month, but admits she has “about eight facts” she really wants to draw, so will see where the inspiration takes her.